Silently and Very Fast
by The Carnivorous Muffin
Summary: Bella is only twelve years old when she becomes a vampire, as an immortal child she is forced to find her way in a world that spins on a slightly tilted axis where every Dorian Gray has a decrepit portrait of himself hanging in his back closet. AU


The first thing she knew was that there were worlds in the eyes of her murderer; thousands of worlds floating as specks of light in that infinite scarlet sea. Contained within them were the infinite possibilities and realities, each pulsating with life as they drifted about through the void. His face, pale and chiseled like a marble statue, was also beautiful but it was his eyes that had held her attention. Somehow she knew even then, in that first moment, that he was going to kill her.

This was the beginning, that moment where her eyes met his, and she saw the infinite possibilities that existed. It wasn't the moment of her death, that didn't come until six months later, but it was the time when she felt as if something was going to change. The moment when she noticed the storm's existence on the horizon.

She was twelve years old and living with her mother in Phoenix Arizona. They had just moved there recently, her mother always being inspired to live in one warm place or another, and had finished unpacking all the boxes. She loved her mother but sometimes she felt as if she was taking care of her and not the other way around. Bella was the one who made her own lunches, checked the mail, and made sure the bills and taxes were paid on time. Those who met her described her as quiet and shy but also very mature and intelligent but that was when they remembered her at all. She was a very pretty child, but her silence tended to make her forgettable and she didn't have very many friends to remind people of her existence.

Perhaps that's why those stranger's eyes had struck her so, he had been the first to look at her and see, and perhaps he was the only one who had. Walking home from school, that fateful day when her mother had forgotten to pick her up, she had found herself stopping to stare at the back of a man as he watched a burning building. He was dressed casually in dark colors so as not to draw the eye and yet he could not disguise that aura of otherness completely, blond hair caught the flame's light and seemed to glow like a brazen sunset. He stood so very still, watching that building, as if he had been standing there for both an eternity and a single moment. She had stopped walking even to watch him, watch his back and the flames and his uncanny stillness. Then he had turned his head and scarlet indifferent eyes met hers.

An infinite sea of scarlet.

And then words, in a bell-like voice, "Run home and forget this moment, little girl."

She had hesitated, watching the light from the fire and the fading sunlight dance off his pale features casting colorful shadows, as if his skin were made of pearl or opal. Those eyes though, remained the same, and as she continued to hesitate they focused upon her. Eventually she found the courage to move forward, without a word and took shaking hesitant steps past him.

And so it was that Bella met Death Destroyer of Worlds.

She dreamed of those eyes long before he saw her again, long before she knew his true name. She would stand before him in the street, the house ever burning, and him smiling as he extended a hand toward her in a manner that spoke of faerie princes who stole young girls into their kingdoms with only a word and a blink of an eye. She woke unsure if they were nightmares or fantasies, only that overwhelmed feeling of certainty remained in her head once she had blinked the sleep from her eyes.

In class she began to draw pictures of his eyes, never quite right never quite perfect, into the margins of her notes. They would stare at her, a sad imitation of a slowly dimming memory, but even so they would burn through the paper with that strange sentience they seemed to possess. In films she'd look for him, or rather something like him, that cold alien aura that had surrounded him and she began to store the lists.

Somehow she knew even then, seeing his face in Agent Smith's in the Matrix, that she would meet him again. Those eyes didn't hold a promise for her, she had been nothing in that moment an idle distraction, but they had contained possibility and that was not brushed aside so lightly.

She thought it would be years though, it always seemed that way in the stories, that he would find her again once she was all grown up. That he would take her into the realm of faerie, back to his own planet, or his own dimension with a smile on his face that said he had been watching her the whole time with those eyes. And all the while the worlds within his eyes would dance like fireflies in an orchestrated waltz.

She had expected him in a dramatic setting, had expected dramatic music, something to cue his presence.

When he did arrive it was only to hide behind a newspaper in a park while her mother disappeared somewhere or another. She almost didn't recognize him. He was dressed oddly warm for the weather, wearing a long jacket, light gloves, and a hat that shaded his face. It wasn't until the newspaper lowered slightly and she saw his eyes that she knew it was him.

"Hello Bella," He said softly.

The world didn't stop in that moment, it continued rushing by her, but even so she felt as if it had dimmed somewhat now that he was here staring at her and saying her name. She didn't ask him how he knew it, he was a faerie prince of course he knew it, but she felt herself grow pale at the sound of those syllables in any case.

"You're the man who lit the building on fire." She said, making an inference.

The man nodded casually, as if arson did not even register to him as something that demanded attention, "Your report cards said you were intelligent." He smiled then, knowing that she had only been there to see his back to the blaze, not to see him light it.

She blinked. Her report cards, she hadn't expected that, it just seemed like a trivial thing for him to go through. "Why are you here?"

His smile remained, "I'm afraid I don't have time to answer that here."

Bella shook her head in confusion, he still radiated that aura and yet somehow he was conversing with her as if it was the most natural thing in the world for an older strange man to approach little girls in the park. He looked perfectly relaxed, as if he was there that Sunday afternoon just to read the paper and regard the scenery, all while a pale little girl stood stiffly in front of him.

"Are you going to take me away?" She asked in a horrified whisper.

"Of course."

She shook her head, unconsciously taking a step back from him, "I don't want to go."

"The desires of children are irrelevant where I come from." He said with a slight quirk of the lips, as if he were saying more than just those words.

"There must be someone else." She said in that same whisper, looking around the park, "Someone older or taller or… Isn't there anyone?"

He did not answer this question, merely looked at her, his eyes as certain and ineffable as they were before the fire. She knew then, with certainty, that for the arsonist the answer would always be no.

She opened her mouth to repeat the question but then changed the phrasing, "Why now? Why me?"

His smile became a grin, "Why not, Isabella Swan?"

Suddenly she realized just what sort of a predicament she was in, she looked around desperately for her mother who was nowhere in sight. She looked back to him with wide terrified eyes, all while he regarded her curiously. She knew then that she would never see her mother again, that her mother would never know what had happened to her daughter, that she would always wonder why she had gone off to speak to a friend for those two minutes. But it wasn't her fault, it would never have been her fault.

"Please," She said quietly, "Just let me say goodbye."

But he said in a flat voice, "Do you imagine she'd let you go?"

"She doesn't have to know, it doesn't have to be now, does it? Surely there's someone else, someone older, more…" But the look in his eyes did not change, and she knew that it was useless to argue.

He stood then, folding the newspaper so that he was staring her fully in the face, and his smile faded into nothingness as if all expression had been drained from him. There was no apology, nothing to indicate what was about to occur, he merely held out his hand and said, "It's time Bella, we need to leave."

And she ran then, faster than she ever had in her life, he watched her with a tilted head and narrowed eyes but did not run after her. He said later that he had tipped his hat to her and walked off, waiting for a more opportune moment, as she found her mother and began sobbing uncontrollably.

She said she'd gotten lost and that she couldn't find her mom. She didn't talk about the stranger with the garnet eyes. She didn't say that he had promised to come for her just like those faerie princes in the stories. She didn't say goodbye.

Her mother panicked with her for a few hours, they went home, they watched videos. She put Bella to sleep and despite her daughter's protests she turned off the light.

And somehow, as soon as that switch turned, Bella knew he was there.

"You're making this harder than it needs to be, Bella."

She turned slowly, hoping it was just her head, just her own head and nothing else. She knew it wasn't.

He'd abandoned his daytime clothes; the hat, jacket, and gloves had all disappeared replaced by slimmer more elegant apparel. He was leaning against her windowsill with ease, as if he had been there all night, as if he belonged there. He smiled down at her indulgently, the way he would a small child whose antics he found slightly amusing.

"Please." She said thinking of her mother downstairs, of her future, and of all the things she hadn't done yet.

He inclined his head but said nothing, merely stared at her, the same way as he had in the park as if they had never moved from that moment at all and those brief hours of intermission were nothing more than a blink of an eye.

"It will kill her." Bella said, still thinking of her mother downstairs unaware of the man in her bedroom, "You can't do that to her."

The man did not look away, didn't change expressions, but merely continued to wait. Finally he said, "After we leave tonight she will not even remember your existence."

Bella jolted out of bed and backed away from him toward the door, still no movement, just those eyes burning into hers. "What do you mean? What are you talking about? What did you do to her?" She screamed the last question but there was no sound of panicked footsteps, no reaction of any kind, as if her mother hadn't heard her at all.

Here the man turned his head slightly, toward the door, and said in a softer voice, "It's a gift."

"What did you do?" She repeated her body torn between lunging and flying toward her mother, her mother who wasn't coming who wasn't responding who was down there in trouble something terrible having happened.

Here a small smile appeared on that angelic face, "I made her forget, but even more than that, I took her back to the time before you existed. You see there are two abyss's in a human's life, the one we think of most is death, the end, but what about the time before the beginning? You didn't exist then and yet no one mourned your absence, noticed your emptiness, grieved for your lost opportunities. She isn't coming because she can't see the reason in coming for a being who does not exist, she can't hear you, see you, or feel you, because to her you are that first void before life begins."

Without thinking she ran towards him intent on scratching out his eyes, he caught her hands before she could even think of reaching his face and held them in a firm and cold grip.

He continued to speak as if she hadn't moved at all, meanwhile her fingers began to freeze beneath his cold dead hands, "It's easier this way."

There were words she didn't know, words she needed, that were clawing their way out of the back of her throat coming out only as screams her hands reaching for his eyes. In that moment she couldn't see his face or anything, only her white blinding rage and sheer panic. It was to be her last conscious act as a human and it would be with regret that she looked back upon it, what a waste of precious time.

After that it must have been panic or chloroform, because a hazy darkness descended and she was removed from the house in Phoenix Arizona and the mother who would never remember her existence. Before the unconsciousness had faded the venom entered her bloodstream and burned its way toward her fluttering heart. And though her mind was half gone somehow she still tasted hell, the memories of her human life flitting past her into the abyss until only the agony of the moment remained.

She drifted on the river Styx longer than she could remember, her body abandoned inside its cocoon left aside until the transformation was complete. She knew without knowing that when she opened her eyes again the Isabella Swan that had been would be gone and though she might call her new-self Bella it would not be the same. For three days she dreamed of eternity while her human heart sputtered frantically until one day it simply gave in.

She opened her eyes and there was light.

**Author's Note: So this is very AU, first off I feel that it is necessary to say that this vampire is not Jasper, he'll be introduced by name within the next chapter. Normally I refrain from OCs as I find them tacky and often times terrible but given how this plot is going to go I felt I had no choice but to use one as a secondary character. Anyway, thanks for reading and reviews would be awesome.**

**Disclaimer: I don't own Death Note**


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